Sweet Peas.
Oh, what is the use of such pretty wings
If one never, never can fly?
Pink and fine as the clouds that shine
In the delicate morning sky.
With a perfume sweet as the lilies keep
Down in their vases so white and deep.
The brown bees go humming aloft;
The humming-bird soars away;
The butterfly blows like the leaf of a rose,
Off, off in the sunshine gay;
While you peep over the garden wall,
Looking so wistfully after them all.
Are you tired of the company
Of the balsams so dull and proud?
Of the coxcombs bold and the marigold,
And the spider-wort wrapped in a cloud?
Have you not plenty of sunshine and dew,
And crowds of gay gossips to visit you?
How you flutter, and reach, and climb!
How eager your wee faces are!
Aye, turned to the light till the blind old night
Is led to the world by a star.
Well, it surely is hard to feel one’s wings,
And still be prisoned like wingless things.
“Tweet, tweet,” then says Parson Thrush,
Who is preaching up in a tree;
“Though you never may fly while the world goes by,
Take heart, little flowers,” says he;
“For often, I know, to the souls that aspire
Comes something better than their desire!”
St. Nicholas.